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Bhai Didar Singh

BHAI DIDAR SINGH (wearing black glares in the above image), A SELFLESS AND HIGHLY ACCOMPLISHED SIKH MUSICIAN WHO NEVER GOT HIS DUE

Harjap Singh Aujla

Bhai Didar Singh was a totally selfless (faqir) Kirtania, who devoted his entire life to the singing of the Guru’s Hymns in the finest classical traditions without seeking any monitory rewards. He lived in poverty and died in poverty, without ever complaining about his plight. Most of the modern day Sikhs have forgotten him completely, but his merit as a maestro and his extreme simplicity deserves that his story, as I understand it, must be told.

During the sixties my father late S. Sochet Singh once attended a post Akhand Path Kirtan programme in rural Hoshiarpur. He was a true connoisseur of “Gurmat Sangeet” and was thoroughly impressed with the sweet versatile voice of a blind black bearded young musician named Bhai Didar Singh. After that cursory reference, I did not hear about this maestro. He was never heard of in a “Kirtan Darbar”, or at any private religious function. To me his name and faint memory remained dormant in a remote corner of my brain for years to come
Around 1983 someone in Vancouver gave me a tape with handwritten title Bhai Didar Singh Raagi on its cover.